


I Will Pay You To Shut Up Now

by slashmania



Series: 50 Thousand Words (from October to December!) [30]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Anxiety, Arthur's youthful face, Cars, Fear, Hugs, M/M, Racing, Running, Teasing, Worry, and Eames gets that, fast, joking, tense situations that could have ended in violence done to Arthur or Eames but didn't, that face hides nothing unless Arthur works at it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:00:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22052155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmania/pseuds/slashmania
Summary: “What was it you said to Saito when he first hit Cobb up for an inception?” And then Eames began to do an impression of Arthur’s American accent, and continued the example saying, “You’ll always know the genesis of an idea, true inspiration is impossible to fake.And then something about something and an elephant.”Arthur narrowed his eyes at Eames. “It wasdon’t think about elephants. I was using it as an example of how impossible it was to plant an idea into another person’s head.”
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Series: 50 Thousand Words (from October to December!) [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1503791
Kudos: 25





	I Will Pay You To Shut Up Now

**Author's Note:**

> Day 30: Fast  
> 942 words
> 
> Almost there! Just one more prompt!

Once they’d finally gotten to a safe hiding place in the city, Eames slumped against the nearest wall and looked at Arthur, who was pacing and full of nervous energy from having to choose between fight or flight, then doing a little of both to get to safety with Eames.

“I can’t believe it.”

“Then just forget about it, Eames.”

Eames solemnly shook his head. “I can’t just _unlearn_ it, love. This is something that I’m going to know forever and ever.”

Arthur stopped pacing so he could stand before Eames, who was still slumped against the wall.

“Then I’ll just extract the information out of you. I’ll pull a Cobb and force you to help me do it while I’m in the dream!”

“But I’ll still know it,” Eames said, shaking his head because he hadn’t wanted to point out the flaw in Arthur’s plan. Or threat. Plan-threat?

“Then I’ll incept you, damn it!”

“What was it you said to Saito when he first hit Cobb up for an inception?” And then Eames began to do an impression of Arthur’s American accent, and continued the example saying, “ _You’ll always know the genesis of an idea, true inspiration is impossible to fake._ And then something about something and an elephant.”

Arthur narrowed his eyes at Eames. “It was _don’t think about elephants._ I was using it as an example of how impossible it was to plant an idea into another person’s head.”

“But that was topside.”

“Yes.”

“And we’ve recently proven that an inception is possible three levels down in shared dreams when your team is run by a mad man willing to throw his team under the train he brought into the dream.”

“The expression is _thrown under the bus_ ,” Arthur corrected.

“Well he didn’t bring a bus into the first level and let you start to question Ariadne about how ridiculous that was, only to interrupt again to start talking about the militarization. He threw her under the bus right there and then proceeded to treat you like you were some second-rate point man. See? I’m capable of using the expression!”

Arthur was stone-faced and not eager to agree that Cobb had been an asshole in that situation. If he did it would divert the conversation from what their current topic was.

“I can feel you silently agreeing with me, Arthur.”

“I just want you to let go of what you’ve just learned about me. Just stop thinking about it.”

Eames stopped leaning against the wall and reached for Arthur, clutching the man by the shoulders and shaking him once.

“I’ll never be able to forget this, love! It’s too much!” Then Eames finally dropped the serious act and started giggling to himself. Eames leaned against Arthur, who remained stone-faced and still, bearing all of the forger’s weight as the man embraced him a little.

“I will pay you to shut up now.”

“You _whooped_ , darling,” Eames said while hugging Arthur to himself. He said it against Arthur’s neck, and didn’t get to see Arthur’s expression changing from calculated non-reaction to anxiety.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes! Yes, you did! You sounded exactly like an excited kid when you took me by the hand and raced to that slide—”

“It wasn’t a slide!”

“It was a drainage pipe someone had left next to the stack of lumber in the construction site we ran through when the mark’s men were chasing us!”

“Darling, you practically said weee as we went down the drainage pipe.”

Arthur shoved Eames away, honestly angry now!

“I did not say weee!” Arthur looked frustrated and finally admitted, “I whooped! Are you satisfied now? I like going fast. I like winning a race, I like beating other people to the finish line!”

“You also seemed to like beating the men who were chasing us and caught you whooping...”

Arthur took a deep breath and said, “They were laughing at me. I don’t enjoy it when men who were paid to kill us pause in the chase, corner us, and then laugh at me. So I knocked them out and started running with you again.”

“I was there, Arthur, I saw it all. But I also notice that you haven’t knocked me out yet since I also witnessed your happy whooping as you went down a slide to win a race that would have otherwise ended much sooner with us both getting shot in the head topside.”

Arthur had a deceptively youthful face. A face that he tried to mask with forbidding expressions and biting comments so no one would see how an emotion like fear or worry could take ten years off his age. The fear he’d attempted to hide with anger, the worry he’d covered with humor, was shining through that mask and Eames did the only thing he could.

He hugged Arthur again.

“You did what you could. We got away just fine, even if they almost caught us in that construction site. Taking that drainage pipe had been a good idea because we’d gotten more of a lead, but it was our bad luck that they’d managed to rally. You knocked them out more to stop them from following us here. I’m sorry that I’ve been making jokes and teasing you about your methods and about the whooping.”

“Why couldn’t you have found out about all the illegal car racing I did when I was in college?”

This caught Eames’s interest and he ran his hand down Arthur’s back, sort of soothing, but mostly enjoying the physical contact.

“I know now,” Eames answered. “How about you tell me your stories about dangerous car racing?”


End file.
